Americans have had a love-hate relationship with the stock market for 200 years; long an object of suspicion, fear, and even revulsion, Wall Street eventually came to be seen as a pathway to immense personal wealth and freedom—though with the power to shake national and international economies. The Philip Taft Prize–winning author of Labor Will Rule, Steve Fraser tells the story of this transformation in a narrative filled with colorful tales of con men and aristocrats, Napoleonic financiers and reckless adventurers, while illuminating the values and the character of our nation.

"Fraser wisely treads softly on the machinations of late to focus, for instance, on the Gilded Age, where those men known as the Four Horsemen—Cornelius Vanderbilt, Daniel Drew, Jay Gould, and James Fisk—became scoundrels of heroic proportion. Lest we forget, he reminds us that the panics and subsequent depressions of 1837, 1857, and 1873 were just as deeply felt as the Great Depression would be in the next century. This is one place where history repeats itself over and over: a major terrorist bomb attack occurred September 16, 1920, and the first corporate raiders were demonized as 'white sharks' in the 1950s. Fraser gives a thorough analysis of this scandal-ridden menagerie as reflected in books, movies, and the political arena."—Booklist (starred review)